Exhibition Fact Sheets by Brandon Bauer
Through video works, photo, and graphic sequences the exhibition Fragments of the Acceleration ex... more Through video works, photo, and graphic sequences the exhibition Fragments of the Acceleration explores the atomic origins of what has been referred to as "the Great Acceleration of the Anthropocene"-and presents a fragmentary view of the current epoch in which we live.
The project Landscapes of Absence explores ethical issues around the use of ISIS propaganda image... more The project Landscapes of Absence explores ethical issues around the use of ISIS propaganda images within the media. The project uses images drawn from eight beheading incidents disseminated through ISIS media outlets. In the work, the dehumanized propaganda image is erased leaving only the landscape and the absence of image as a metaphor for the larger issue of the absence of reliable reporting in areas under ISIS control. The project includes a series of eight 22.5"x30" descriptive print works about the beheading incidents, four 40"x60" landscape mural prints, a single-channel video, and a poster publication with information about the project.
Exhibition Catalogs by Brandon Bauer
Imagining Human Rights, 2024
Imagining Human Rights is a collaborative portfolio of prints celebrating the 75th Anniversary of... more Imagining Human Rights is a collaborative portfolio of prints celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The portfolio was developed in the Fall of 2023 as a project between Brandon Bauer's Introduction to Peace and Justice course and Katie Ries's Introduction to Printmaking course. It was created in collaboration with visiting artists Aaron Hughes and Pablo Mendoza from the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/ Education Project (PNAP), based in Chicago. The students were paired with one student from each class and were randomly assigned three articles from the declaration. They worked together to decide how to represent the articles they were assigned. The students went through a series of iterative stages developing the work, and were provided feedback from Aaron and Pablo during their campus visit. As they learned the process of screen printing, each pair developed a two-color print in response to the articles they had drawn from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The project and exhibition was organized by Brandon Bauer and supported by the Cassandra Voss Center, with additional support from the Norman Miller Center for Peace, Justice, and Public Understanding, the Humanities Division, and the Art Department at St. Norbert College.
Let Us Vote!, 2022
An interview with the artist Aram Han Sifuentes on the occasion of her exhibition titled "Let Us ... more An interview with the artist Aram Han Sifuentes on the occasion of her exhibition titled "Let Us Vote!" at St. Norbert College in the Fall of 2022. Aram Han Sifuentes is a fiber and social practice artist based in Chicago who works to claim spaces for immigrant and disenfranchised communities. Her work often revolves around skill sharing, specifically sewing techniques, to create multiethnic and intergenerational sewing circles, which become a place for empowerment, subversion, and protest. Her exhibition at St. Norbert College brings together works on democracy, citizenship, and political participation.
Oliver Ressler : Catastrophe Bonds, 2018
A PDF of the catalog produced on the occasion of the exhibition "Catastrophe Bonds", the first su... more A PDF of the catalog produced on the occasion of the exhibition "Catastrophe Bonds", the first survey of Oliver Ressler‘s work in the United States. The exhibition focuses on forms of grassroots democracy as well as economic and political alternatives to the existing state of global affairs.
Bring The War Home, 2015
Bring The War Home is a collaborative project and exhibition in which Brandon Bauer worked with S... more Bring The War Home is a collaborative project and exhibition in which Brandon Bauer worked with St. Norbert College Art students to research and restage an archival photograph of a 1969 Vietnam War protest on the St. Norbert College Campus.
Book Chapters by Brandon Bauer
Community Engagement and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Affordances and Challenges of Service Learning in Crisis, 2025
This chapter describes the development of an arts-based, civics-focused service-learning course i... more This chapter describes the development of an arts-based, civics-focused service-learning course in the context of the COVID pandemic and the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. The pandemic upended operations as colleges and universities were forced to pivot to remote and hybrid forms of teaching. This created challenges with service-learning courses, as they rely upon reciprocal in-person community partnerships. During the 2019-2020 academic year, I developed a course titled Art in a Democratic Society. The students creatively participated in our campus get-out-the-vote efforts during the 2020 election and engaged in election-related service. This chapter describes the development of this course in the pre-pandemic period, the pivot to hybrid learning, the importance of institutional support in the success of the course, the importance of creative and experiential courses focused on civics, as well as how the subsequent iterations of this course have continued to develop from the experience of the pilot course.
Critical Digital Making in Art Education, 2020
The visual art project and exhibition, Landscapes of Absence, critically explores issues regardin... more The visual art project and exhibition, Landscapes of Absence, critically explores issues regarding the use of ISIS propaganda in broadcast, print, and social media in the absence of objective reporting. In this project, images from eight beheading incidents disseminated through ISIS media outlets have been manipulated. Images of victims were digitally erased, leaving only the landscape as a metaphor for the absence of reliable reporting from Islamic State controlled territories. Through this use of digital erasure, dignity is reasserted through the signification of the absence of the dehumanized image of victimhood. In this essay, the process of creating the critical digital media work Landscapes of Absence is described and discussed in the context of art historical perspectives and conceptualizations of erasure and absence. Ethical implications related to the use and consummation of mediated images and its impact on art education are also discussed.
Oliver Ressler: Catastrophe Bonds, 2018
The exhibition, Catastrophe Bonds, focuses on forms of grassroots democracy as well as economic a... more The exhibition, Catastrophe Bonds, focuses on forms of grassroots democracy as well as economic and political alternatives to the existing state of global affairs. A key unifying theme running through the work is envisioning and attempting to enact new forms of vibrant social and economic democracy where all voices are welcomed in the deliberative process. This theme is explored through documentary work that highlights grassroots organizing efforts, video interviews with contemporary thinkers on alternative social and economic models and their historical precedents, and an examination of the pressures that the current catastrophes of climate change and emergency migration are having on Western representative democracies.
Catastrophe Bonds is the first survey of Oliver Ressler‘s work in the United States. This multi-site exhibition was curated by Brandon Bauer, Associate Professor of Art, St. Norbert College, in association with Shan Bryan-Hanson, curator of Art Galleries and Collections, St. Norbert College, and Kate Mothes, curator of the Lawton Art Gallery, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
Papers by Brandon Bauer
Arts & International Affairs, 2019
The multi-site exhibition Catastrophe Bonds represents the first survey of the work of Austrian a... more The multi-site exhibition Catastrophe Bonds represents the first survey of the work of Austrian artist Oliver Ressler exhibited in the United States. Ressler’s work is both urgent and timely. Reactionary populist movements have been on the ascendency in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, and counter-movements seeking to reassert the values of liberal democracy have risen in opposition to the threats against civil liberties and the attacks upon democratic institutions. In this exhibition, Ressler’s focus on enacting and expanding forms of democracy is especially compelling and timely. The selected works in the exhibition focus on forms of grassroots democracy, economic and political alternatives to the existing state of global affairs, activism around climate change, and issues relating to what has been described as the European “migration crisis.” But, as Ressler’s work points out, it is not a crisis of migration. Rather, it is a crisis of war, terror, and economic strangulation that has forced people to move. A key unifying theme running through the work is envisioning and attempting to enact new forms of vibrant social and economic democracy where all voices are welcomed in the deliberative process. This theme is explored through documentary work highlighting grassroots organizing efforts, video interviews with contemporary thinkers on alternative social and economic models and their historical precedents, and on the pressures that the current catastrophes of climate change and emergency migration are having on representative democracies around the globe.
The exhibition and its related public programming were developed as a collaborative project sponsored by the art programs at St. Norbert College and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and through the joint International Visiting Scholars Program of the two institutions. The exhibition was curated by Brandon Bauer, Associate Professor of Art, St. Norbert College, in association with Shan Bryan-Hanson, curator of art galleries and collections, St. Norbert College, and Kate Mothes, curator of the Lawton Art Gallery, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. A catalog was published to accompany the exhibition by the St. Norbert College press.
Media-N: Uncovering News: Reporting and Forms of New Media Art, V. 12 N. 3, 2017
The project Landscapes of Absence explores ethical issues around the use of ISIS propaganda withi... more The project Landscapes of Absence explores ethical issues around the use of ISIS propaganda within the media. The project examines the use of propaganda in the absence of reliable and objective images, since the brutal beheadings of Western journalists have made it too dangerous to report from areas under control of the self-proclaimed Islamic State. The project uses images drawn from eight beheading incidents disseminated through ISIS media outlets. In this project, these images are erased, leaving only the landscape and the absence of the dehumanized image as a metaphor for the larger issue of the absence of reliable reporting from this region. While there is an important lineage of erasure in modern and contemporary art, this project uses erasure for a different end. Much of the use of erasure in visual art since Modernism has been for iconoclastic ends, whereas this project uses erasure as a way to reassert dignity through the signification of the absence of the dehumanized image.
Pool, 2011
This essay examines the tension between the culture of use signaled by the internet and the cultu... more This essay examines the tension between the culture of use signaled by the internet and the culture of ownership embedded in the clearance culture of restrictive copyright law through a comparison with and reinterpretation of Richard Serra’s 1967-1968 verb list.
Teaching & Teaching Documents by Brandon Bauer
This course explores the role of art in a democratic society through a combination of individual ... more This course explores the role of art in a democratic society through a combination of individual and collaborative project development, community engagement, as well as research and reflection on a variety of related topics and concepts. Recently, an increasing number of artists, curators, critics, and arts administrators have begun to turn their energies toward a new type of participatory social practice art that seeks to bring about positive change within a contemporary society confronted by complex issues and challenges on many fronts. To thrive, democratic societies need citizens to participate in their community for the common good. This participation has many forms and manifestations. Examples of democratic participation include voting, serving in an elected office, performing community service, advocating for a cause, or protesting injustice. To understand our role as citizens in a democracy we will explore the work of artists who critically or creatively examine ideas and fo...
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Exhibition Fact Sheets by Brandon Bauer
Exhibition Catalogs by Brandon Bauer
The project and exhibition was organized by Brandon Bauer and supported by the Cassandra Voss Center, with additional support from the Norman Miller Center for Peace, Justice, and Public Understanding, the Humanities Division, and the Art Department at St. Norbert College.
Book Chapters by Brandon Bauer
Catastrophe Bonds is the first survey of Oliver Ressler‘s work in the United States. This multi-site exhibition was curated by Brandon Bauer, Associate Professor of Art, St. Norbert College, in association with Shan Bryan-Hanson, curator of Art Galleries and Collections, St. Norbert College, and Kate Mothes, curator of the Lawton Art Gallery, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
Papers by Brandon Bauer
The exhibition and its related public programming were developed as a collaborative project sponsored by the art programs at St. Norbert College and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and through the joint International Visiting Scholars Program of the two institutions. The exhibition was curated by Brandon Bauer, Associate Professor of Art, St. Norbert College, in association with Shan Bryan-Hanson, curator of art galleries and collections, St. Norbert College, and Kate Mothes, curator of the Lawton Art Gallery, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. A catalog was published to accompany the exhibition by the St. Norbert College press.
Teaching & Teaching Documents by Brandon Bauer